Ghana’s former military ruler Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings has shrugged off allegations by one of his June 4, 1979 allies, Major Boakye Gyan, that he had murdered several army officers after staging a successful coup that year.
Boakye Gyan’s accusation on Tuesday received mixed reactions from Ghanaians as most of them did not understand why the retired major made such an allegation at the time the country has forgotten about atrocities meted out against some military men in the heat of the revolution.
In responding to the alleged murderer tag, the spokesperson for the Rawlings family, Ernest Owusu Bempah, on Wednesday, brushed aside accusations that the former president orchestrated and sponsored the extrajudicial killings of some former army personnel shortly after the 1979 revolution.
The former close associate of Mr. Rawlings and one of the architects of the June 4 uprising, Major Osahene Boakye Gyan, had suggested in recent media interview that Mr. Rawlings had a hand in the abduction and murder of one Flt. Lt. Kojo Lee, who played a central role in the rebellion against top military officers during the revolution.
Major Gyan was quoted vividly that as saying that “I said he hanged Kojo Lee on the helicopter with blocks tied to his legs and drown him in the Atlantic Ocean. That is Rawlings for you,” the retired military officer alleged in an interview on a local radio Neat FM in Accra.
However, in a strongly worded statement copied to GhanaWeb, Ernest Owusu Bempah described Boakye Gyan’s claims as spurious and fictitious, aimed at tarnishing the hard-earned reputation of the Rawlingses.
“I have read bit and pieces of the news article culled from Boakye Gyan’s interview with Adakabre Frimpong Manso on Neat FM published on GhanaWeb. Com “I couldn’t help but shrug my shoulders in utter disbelief when bare lies and contradictions came jumping at me from his spiteful interview.”
“Boakye Gyan stated in his interview that ‘Rawlings killed and drowned Flt. -Lt Kojo Lee in the ocean.’ I find Boakye Gyan’s hallucinatory squawk to be another futile attempt to discredit Chairman Rawlings,” Owusu Bempah’s statement reads.
“I was surprised by the Boakye Gyan’s lack of grasp on Ghana’s political developments? Absolutely, not. In democratic Ghanaian politics, it is not unusual to see, and read, off-centered accounts from so-called actors, who exploit the gullibility of the unsuspecting public,” he said.
While urging the public to treat Boakye Gyan’s claim with absolute contempt, the statement insisted that the late Flt Lt Kojo Lee was apprehended and was convicted of murder by a competent court of jurisdiction.
Boakye Gyan, who was the Public Relations Officer for the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), would this occasion come out with some allegations against Mr. Rawlings, who ruled Ghana for close to 20 years. It beats the imagination of Ghanaians as why these military allies are now enemies.
Boakye Gyan went to abroad after the AFRC junta handed over power to a civilian government in August 1979, but Rawlings stayed in the country and staged another coup in December 31, 1981 with Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), which ruled till 1992 when Rawlings stood an election and won on the ticket of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), a party he allegedly founded.
Now Boakye Gyan after returning to the country joined NDC and even contested for Member of Parliament on the ticket of the party in 2012, but lost. So people are wondering why occasional attacks on Rawlings.
DAP/GIK/APA